


Cold

by TheDogPotato



Category: Whitechapel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Suicide, Supernatural Elements, psychic!Kent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-05
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-09-28 11:28:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10098518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDogPotato/pseuds/TheDogPotato
Summary: Chandler once convinced Kent that the supernatural didn’t exist, now Kent has to convince him of the opposite.





	1. Chapter 1

Kent sighed deeply as he realised he’d read the same line on the cold case file in front of him for the fourth time in a row. Slowly he stretched his arms in front of him and suppressed a yawn as he glanced around the incident room. He quickly realised that he was the only one who kept up the pretence of working. Miles sat casually in a chair reading a paper, and Riley was on a webpage that definitely wasn’t work related. Mansell smirked while typing on his phone, which Kent decided to pointedly ignore, as he had a good idea of who he was texting.

They hadn’t had a new case in two weeks, and at first that had actually done them a lot of good. After the stressful end to the Abrahamians case, they’d had time to calm down and settle a bit back into place. They’d had electricians and plumbers around the station to fix the sabotaged lights and pipes, which had done wonders for the work environment, but after the pressing paperwork was done, they’d all very quickly found themselves bored out of their minds.

Everyone but Chandler who had poured his heart and soul into the work that they really didn’t have at this point. The last case had hit him hard, and despite Miles’ pep talks he really hadn’t improved much in these past two weeks, but concentrating on work seemed to be his way of dealing with the failure.

Kent tried to follow his lead, he really did, but after he found himself stuck on the next line after just conquering the previous one, he gave up, and went to make some tea instead. It had gone unusually chilly in the incident room anyway, and Kent thought for a suspicious moment that someone might have sabotaged the heating as well, but then he came to his senses and realised it was probably just turned down to save money. Realising the kettle was still mostly full and lukewarm from the last person making a cup of tea, he flicked the kettle on without refilling the water, now that he was thinking of saving money. That and the cold. He hadn’t thought about it when he was sat at the chair, despite his mind wandering while trying to work, but now that it had come to his attention he felt a shiver go through him.

“It’s chilly today, huh?” he said to make some light conversation. They’d been working on that in the previous weeks, and at that they’d been alright. Despite the news that had broken so quickly after their celebrations, they’d had those few shared moments of pure joy, and instead of going back to barking and growling at each other, they’d found a mutual goal in trying to get their DI through the aftermath of the case.

“I suppose it is. I hadn’t really thought about that,” Riley answered as she turned around to look at him. “I see you’ve already found the solution to that.” She nodded at the kettle.

“Yeah,” Kent said. He was gonna offer her a cup as well, but didn’t know if there would actually be enough water in the kettle. He was quiet for a moment too long pondering about that, and Riley turned her attention towards the screen again. They weren’t quite back at the easy banter that had come before their past few cases, but at least the silence between them was a comfortable one.

With the cup of tea in hand, Kent returned to his desk and with a sigh he tried to tackle the file again, but even with his hands cradling the still-too-warm cup of tea he felt the coldness cut through him like a sharp wind on a winter’s night.

“Are you sure, you’re not about to catch a cold?” Riley asked him moments later, and Kent realised his teeth had been chattering. He nodded his head, even as he thought that he might be, cause he was clearly the only one feeling as cold as he did.

“DC Kent!” a man’s voice sounded, almost commanding and Kent’s head whipped away from Riley to look ahead. It hadn’t been Chandler’s voice, but it definitely hadn’t been Miles’ voice either, and it had come from right in front of him which wasn’t possible as there was no one there. Kent shook his head, before looking back at Riley who eyed him suspiciously.

“I-I’m sorry. I thought I heard something,” Kent explained, even though it didn’t really explain anything.

“We’ve got nothing to do. I’m sure you can go home early, if you’re not feeling too well,” Riley said, and if Kent’s mind wasn’t still confused at what it had managed to conjure up, he’d have smiled at Riley’s concerns.

“I think I’ll just- maybe I just need some fresh air,” Kent said, and grabbed his coat. He looked at Miles for approval. They were technically still working. Miles didn’t even look up from the paper as he nodded, foreseeing Kent’s hesitation.

He left the incident room, not quite sure what good some fresh air was gonna do him, when that really just meant more cold. Instead, he turned to walk up the first flight of stairs planning to find a bathroom farther away from the incident room where he could find a mirror and see if he looked ill, cause apart from the cold, he didn’t feel ill.

“DC Kent!”

Kent stopped dead in his tracks. The voice sounded out from somewhere ahead of him again. He turned around the corner expecting it to be another trick of his mind. There hadn’t been anyone before, but now he saw him. A tall man in a finely tailored suit stood at the top of the stairs. His face was stern. It wasn’t an old face, but the expression he held currently, had made the lines permanent before time. Kent must have misjudged the direction of the voice before, but the questions still remained of who he was, why he wanted to talk to him, and why the others hadn’t seemed to notice.

Kent realised he still wore a shocked expression and hadn’t responded to the man before him, so he quickly mumbled a “sir?” judging him to be a superior officer.

The man nodded once. “I’m DCI Chandler. I have news you must relay to my son.”

Kent stood frozen. He’d always been under the impression that Chandler’s father was dead, and in the back of his mind, he still felt that this was the truth, but there he was standing before him. Part of Kent’s mind wanted to be logical and tell him, that if the man was right there talking to him, he was definitely not dead, but another part of his mind thought back to two weeks before, when he’d found the body of Josie Eagle at the graveyard. He’d already turned around when he heard the voice, much like he’d just heard his name being called out. “I’m right here! Please don’t leave!” the voice had said, and when he’d turned around, there she was, her face visible among the autumn leaves.

Kent had tried not to think about it too much. He’d always been intrigued by his aunt’s stories, retold them to others like they were facts of life, and sometimes let them spook him a bit too much, but he’d always had that thought: “But it isn’t real. Not really!” He hadn’t been so sure after that.

“Detective Constable Kent!” DCI Chandler was demanding his attention, and Kent quickly stumbled upon an apology.

The man simply ignored his apology, as he now knew that he had his attention.

“He didn’t listen before, so you must make him listen. Louise Iver is the devil. She’s manipulating the world around Joseph to make him go mad, cause she cannot hurt him directly.”

Kent was thrown by how matter of fact the DCI sounded. He stood tall, his words coming out clear and strong like they were just any old case briefing, like the ones his Chandler used to give, but the content of what he was saying fitted more with one of Buchan’s too far out theories only rooted in the supernatural instead of history, and though Kent knew nothing of the man before him, he had an air about him that told Kent that he wasn’t one for fanciful theories.

“We cannot let this happen,” DCI Chandler continued unperturbed by Kent’s look of utter confusion. “He is of one of the lineages who can keep her in check. He can send her back from whence she came, and as long as he lives, she will not be able to come back. This is something I have learned far too late. She succeeded against me, but she cannot succeed against my son. He has to best her. Go up against her directly, and make her fall. Do you understand?”

Kent’s mind was racing to keep up, but he managed to nod.

“Good. Then go tell him this,” Commander Chandler ordered, and just like that his form faded in front of Kent’s eyes. If there’d been any doubt before, then this moment washed it all away, as Kent was now left, staring at the cream wall behind the spot where he’d stood.

Kent didn’t think his legs would carry him for much longer, so he sat down against the bannister. He was aware of the heat returning to his body, the contrast so stark that it made him question why Riley had agreed it was chilly in the first place.

The bland interior of the station and the buzzing of everyday activity from the floor below seemed all too ordinary for what Kent had just experienced. He linked his arms across his knees and rested his forehead on them, as he tried to comprehend exactly what all of this meant.

Despite his willingness to get captivated by tales of the supernatural, Kent was surprised at how quickly he’d accepted that this experience meant that he, like his aunt, was a psychic. Of course the rational part of his mind offered feeble explanations, but his gut feeling was so much stronger, and he couldn’t not accept it as the truth.

Accepting it didn’t mean he wasn’t shaken by it, and even as he tried to get up from the stairs, knowing that he couldn’t keep sitting there or else someone was bound to find him and start asking questions, he couldn’t find the strength to stand. A second try send a wave of nausea through him, and he was made aware of how fast his heart was beating, his adrenaline threatening to send his breakfast across the stairs.

Not an uncommon feeling for him, Kent knew that the only thing he could do was to sit still and control his breath until the nausea passed. He leant back against the bannister despite it digging uncomfortably into his back, and closed his eyes.

He thought back to his first crime scene in uniform. They’d been first responders on the crime scene. A London alleyway. He’d gone through the motions in his head before they arrived, ready to assess the scene, make sure it was cleared, identify the parameters of the crime scene and then physically define them. Those were his first concerns. When they arrived however, he’d been distracted by the screams echoing through his head. He stopped to look around unsure whether the danger was still around or if they had to take action if something was happening elsewhere, but his partner had just patted him reassuringly on the back. She hadn’t seemed to care, and then the screams had stopped suddenly. Kent had been unnerved, but everything that day had been stressful and scary, and there hadn’t been much time to linger on the fact when he had to remember everything he had learned about what to do at a crime scene. But he’d since often thought about that first crime scene, and as he was now connecting the dots, he wondered if that had been his first contact with the dead.

He heard footsteps nearby and opened his eyes to look at the officer darting past him up the stairs in too much of a hurry to care about the random detective sat there.

Kent sighed. He really needed to move. He stood up shakily, and put on a brave face before going back into the incident room. Part of him wondered why he even bothered. He knew he wasn’t gonna fool any of the detectives sat in that room.

Riley turned around as soon as she heard the door open, and her face told him that he’d been right.

“You look even worse than you did before!” she exclaimed loudly, but Kent was distracted as he looked into Chandler’s office, only now realising the importance of what he’d been told, and the seriousness of the order he’d been given. Louise Iver was out to drive Chandler mad. To drive him to…

“Emerson? Go home. No one is gonna benefit from you staying here in that state.” Kent vaguely registered Riley’s voice.

He didn’t react, still too focused on Chandler. He would have to convince him of this fact. How would he ever be able to do that? But he had to, if Chandler’s father was to be believed. A sudden hand on his shoulder made him jump. Mansell quickly withdrew his hand at Kent’s reaction.

“Sorry mate, but Riley’s right. You’re so pale, you wouldn’t look whiter if you pulled a sheet over your face pretending to be a ghost!” Trust Mansell to say the inappropriate thing even when he didn’t have a clue it was inappropriate. Kent sighed, his gaze automatically drifting towards Chandler’s office again.

A rustle of paper, and Miles was now staring at him over the top of his newspaper.

“You don’t have to worry about him. I’ll tell him why you’ve gone home, if he even realises before the end of shift.”

Kent couldn’t really blame them for the conclusions they’d jumped to, when he was reacting the way he was, and to refuse their well-meaning half-orders would mean he would have to explain why, and he didn’t have it in him to come up with something or even more unthinkable to tell them the truth.

He nodded, not trusting his words to come out right, and went to sort out his desk before he left, not failing to notice the smile on Riley’s face as he passed her.  
  
“See you tomorrow!” Kent said as he left the room.

“Not if you’re looking liking like that!” Miles called after him, which brought a smile to Kent’s face. They were all teaming up out of concern for him. Apparently teaming up out of concern for others was their thing now, Kent thought as his mind drifted back to Chandler, and the smile disappeared.

He had only just stepped outside in the crisp autumn air, when the icy cold grabbed him again, and Kent took off running. He did not want that experience again. Not right now. He couldn’t. Once he’d reached his bike, he turned back, his instincts making him look, and he saw a woman there. Kent tried deciphering whether she was dead or not, but he didn’t know what the tell-tale signs were. She looked directly at him, but given that he’d just run off like his life depended on it, maybe he’d just attracted her attention. Kent decided to ignore it and turned to his bike once more.

The uneasy feeling didn’t settle as he drove home on his bike. London was a big place with room for many lingering souls, and Kent just wanted to get home as quickly as possible. He tried to embrace the cold autumn air and to pretend he didn’t notice the occasional sharp temperature drop as he wove through the traffic, but he was mentally exhausted when he finally arrived home to his flat.

To his relief, it wasn’t empty. From the hallway, Kent could see one of his flatmates, Joyce, sat at the dining table, soft music playing from her laptop. A book the size of several bricks lay open before her as she jotted down things on paper. Joyce was studying to become a doctor, and her setup on the dining table had become a more or less permanent thing to such an extent that they usually consumed their meals in front of the TV instead.

“Elisabeth or Emerson?” Joyce called out.

“Emerson,” he answered.

“You’re home early. You’re not ill, are you?”

Kent wasn’t surprised when this was her first thought. Joyce was always mother henning him, whether he’d received injuries at work or just had a simple cold, and Kent would always complain about it, but if he was honest with himself, it was often what he needed. He’d never admitted that to her, but he hoped that she knew. Even if she didn’t, his complaints definitely didn’t deter her from looking after him.

“Actually, I didn’t feel too well at work, and since there was nothing to do, I was ordered home,” Kent said. Feeling ill was a good cover when the truth couldn’t really be explained that easily.

She turned around took one quick look at him and shot up from her chair.

“Urgh, it’s that time of year isn’t it? Sit down. I’ll make you a cup of tea,” she said, already in the kitchen before Kent had time to answer.

“I was really just gonna retire to my room,” he said.

“That’s good. Rest is good, but so is tea though, and since I’m already out here, I’ll bring you some,” she replied.

Kent suspected she appreciated the distraction from what seemed to be a 24-hour a day study, though he couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a burden as he continued into his room and let her brew the tea.

When she brought him the tea, she took a look at him, frowned and said:

“You’re gonna change into something more comfortable, right?”

“Get off!” Kent said, turning around to place the cup of tea next to his bed.

“You are though, aren’t you?” Joyce said lingering in the doorway, her eyebrows raised inquisitively. Kent sent her a stare, but her reply was to stare back at him, until he was the one to avert his gaze.

“That’s some great medical advice you’re providing me with there, doc,” Kent huffed.

“Pfft, like you don’t already know what to do when you have a cold. No, what you need is someone to tell you how to not be so miserable all the time, and little things like not throwing yourself on the bed in a suit while feeling sorry for yourself, but taking the time to get a bit comfortable _that_ is something you obviously need someone telling you.”

“Alright, thanks for the tea. It was lovely seeing you,” Kent said making his way to the door, but before he’d moved very far, she moved to close it on her own.

“At least remove the tie,” was the last thing she said before the door clicked shut.

Kent tried to follow her advice and made himself comfortable in bed. He wasn’t optimistic about his chances of actually going to sleep, but the thought of getting some distance between himself and today’s events seemed very appealing, so he tried.

Joyce’s study playlist could be heard through the door; whimsical instrumentals with the occasional woman’s voice singing in a language Kent did not know, interspersed with well-known film scores. Kent realised she’d turned it down, so he wouldn’t be too disturbed, but he tried to hang on to the music. Tried to think of anything else but his newfound ability, but no matter how much he tried, the thoughts wouldn’t leave like an angry wasp insisting on banging its head into the glass, when you’ve tried opening a window for it.

He knew he had to contact his aunt sooner or later, but somehow that was gonna make it more real, and he tried, as he had before to convince himself that it was really just a trick of his mind, but to no avail.  
  
Whenever his mind wasn’t caught up in the theoretical ins and outs of his ability and how his life was gonna change as a result of it, he was reminded of the order he’d been given. Kent thought of the words of Chandler’s father. The fact that Louise Iver couldn’t hurt them directly, but drove them mad instead had quickly made Kent theorize what her end goal for Chandler was, and he wondered if her “succeeding against” DCI Chandler had meant that she’d driven him to the point of suicide.

Kent was scared that he’d made the wrong decision by going home that day. He tried to tell himself that Chandler didn’t feel _that_ bad, but honestly what did he know about that? He was so anxious that he considered calling Chandler over the phone just to see that he was okay, but it was ridiculous cause he was still at work with the others, and even when he wasn’t anymore, Kent knew he could trust Miles to keep an eye on him if he seemed too down, and he hadn’t that day, had he?

Kent was surprised when he heard the front door open with a thud. He hadn’t slept, but he’d been so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t noticed how much time had gone by.  
  
“Hey Joy, is Em home yet?” Kent heard his other flatmate, Elisabeth, call out.

“Yeah, he came home early for once. Said he was feeling ill,” Joyce replied.

There was a pause that might have been filled with a sigh Kent couldn’t hear, judging by the tone of Elisabeth’s voice when she spoke again. “So no one’s thought of food? You could have texted me or something before I got home so I could have dropped by the shop.”

“Oh sorry. I can buy food. It’s no problem,” Joyce answered immediately.

“Umm no. Don’t you have that big exam coming up? I’ll head out again.”

“When don’t I have a big exam coming up? Come on I need the break too. Let’s go together,” Joyce said.

“That just means we’re both wasting time doing this.”

“But at least we have some good company. Come on!”

Kent felt a pang of guilt hearing this conversation. They both worked hard. Joyce with her studies and Elisabeth as a lighting designer currently working on a musical, but sometimes going away on tour with a band that their flatmate, before Joyce, was a part of. Kent hadn’t worked hard that day, and if things were to be fair, he should be the one taking care of food.

Despite feeling guilty about it, Kent was too nervous to back out of his lie. How would he even explain him coming home early then? So he did the thing he’d done as a child and acted more ill than he was, when he came out of his room to eat dinner with the others. He’d no idea if he fooled them or not, cause years later he’d found out that he’d never actually fooled his mum, but neither of them commented on it which he was grateful for.

He was exhausted when he went to bed again. His mind was fried and he seemed unable to focus on a single string of thought, which he felt was a good thing as he couldn’t deal with having to go through the same line of thought over and over as he’d done the whole afternoon. He felt optimistic about sleep when he nestled under the warm duvet, but the gradual decrease in sounds from his roommates as they both went to bed, unsettled him, and fear of the possibility of seeing a ghost amplified as he lay there in the darkness and the silence.

He drew the duvet closer around himself, trying to argue with the scared part of his mind that the warmth of it was proof that no one was around, even though he knew it was impossible to argue with a scared mind.

It didn’t take him long before he’d turned on the lights and opened his laptop to try to distract himself from the ball of fear that was clutched in his chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it!   
> I will try to update every weekend.


	2. Chapter 2

Kent awoke to find the light still on and his computer lying precariously close to the bed’s edge. Sleep had definitely claimed him without him being aware of it, but he was really just happy to have gotten some shuteye, when most of the night had been spent looking at the clock and trying to figure out how much sleep he’d get if he fell asleep then. He knew it was the worst technique for falling asleep, but it didn’t matter cause whenever he put the computer away and dared to turn off the light, he imagined the cold and had to turn on the lights to calm himself down again.

He felt childish afterwards, but it was his first reaction when faced with the fear. He had to be able to see what was there, especially now that he knew there might actually be someone there.

The sleep had quelled his fear a bit, and as he lay under the snug duvet, he felt ready to go to sleep again, but eventually he had to get up and go to work.

The drive to work involved the same sharp temperature drops as the previous day, and Kent tried to ignore it, but as usual he didn’t do a good job of keeping his fearful thoughts at bay, and a temperature drop right as he turned a corner, made him almost lose control of the bike. He’d leant a bit too much to the side and he imagined the wheels sliding out to the side, before he regained the balance only wobbling a bit from side to side.  The shock of it had him reconsider how he would get home in the evening. He considered if the safety of walking would be better than the speed of driving, when he knew he couldn’t avoid the cold warning of whatever was around.

He was relieved when he reached the station for all of the 5 minutes it took him to lock up his bike and reach the incident room. He knew he couldn’t shy away from DCI Chandler’s request today, and he had to mentally prepare himself for the conversation to come.

Chandler was already seated in his office. His door was closed as it mostly was these days. Mansell and Riley were having a laugh next to the boiling kettle. Miles wasn’t there, but judging from the atmosphere in the room, nothing had been called in overnight, so they might be due another uneventful day. Kent wondered if he’d finally get through the file from the day before, but when he’d situated himself in front of the file, it didn’t take him long before his mind began to wander.

He knew he had to confront Chandler sooner rather than later. Treat it like going into cold water, and just make the jump, cause knowing himself, the longer he waited, the more he’d talk himself out of it. The only other reservation he had was that the others were in the room, and he’d rather not have an audience for the conversation. The others were too curious to not eavesdrop or, if he closed the door, observe them closely if he went in there with their knowledge. Especially given the fact that they were all in for another day of boring paperwork, so Kent bided his time until an opportune moment where the rest of the team had left the room for various reasons.

Mansell and Riley had left with a vague excuse of going to see what Buchan was doing, but Kent figured they were probably just going a bit stir crazy and needed a change of environment. Miles hadn’t said where he was going, but when he left he’d clapped Kent on the shoulder, and nodded in Chandler’s direction.

“Keep an eye on him, will you?” he’d said and Kent had nodded his agreement.

When Miles had left, Kent drew in a sharp breath as he steeled himself and walked towards Chandler’s office.

He vividly remembered the time he’d been standing in the doorway, muttering about aswangs and wendigos. He’d tried to seem casual about it, but the case had really gotten to him, and he needed the assurance of his clearheaded superior. Chandler had immediately given him a lecture about how they mustn’t let superstition influence their work as police officers.

It had all been fine and well at the time. Kent’s nerves had settled, and he couldn’t deny that he’d enjoyed the time with Chandler as they went to the crossroads, but what it told him now, was that Chandler would most likely be the last person to believe him, and this time Kent had to convince him.

He knocked tentatively on the door, but it was loud enough for Chandler to look up, his brow furrowed. Kent hadn’t been in his office for almost a week. The only person who regularly visited Chandler in his hideout was Miles, so Kent understood why he looked puzzled as he motioned for Kent to come in.

The smell of tiger balm was overwhelming in the enclosed space, but Kent still closed the door rather than let it ventilate. He wouldn’t risk the others barging in in the middle of their conversation.

“Has anything come up?” Chandler asked, and Kent thought he heard the faintest trace of hope in his voice.

“Uh no, I’m sorry,” Kent said, and he truly was sorry that he had to disappoint Chandler.

“Is anything wrong?” was Chandler’s next question.

Kent shook his head. He was already rubbing his hands nervously together.

“No, sir.”

“Then why are you here?” Three questions in and Chandler was already sounding annoyed. Kent briefly considered lying and leaving the room, but he had to try. At least he was gonna say something else than Chandler was expecting. They’d given him many peptalks since their latest and Kent’s go to thing to mention was how Chandler had saved lives even if he never caught the killers alive. The lives of the people who would have been the killers’ next victims or the non-hypothetical example of the child who’d nearly been sacrificed by his dad.

Chandler had been appreciative of their words of support at first or at least he’d politely thanked them for caring, but eventually he’d grown annoyed by them, and they’d respectfully kept away from his office since then.

“It- it’s about Louise Iver,” Kent said finally conjuring up the strength to take the subject head on. Chandler’s expression changed from mild annoyance to scepticism.

Kent continued:

“She’s trying to drive you mad, but you mustn’t let her, sir.”

Chandler still didn’t speak and at this point Kent couldn’t read his expression at all, but he kept talking. He had to deliver the message.

“You have to defeat her, um, send her back to where she came from.”

“Send her back?” Chandler echoed sounding incredulous.

Kent was well aware that he was explaining this haphazardly, so he stopped himself, took a deep breath and decided to start from the beginning.

“I can talk to the dead. I know it sounds ridiculous, but please just hear me out. I didn’t really know until yesterday where I was contacted by your dad, and he said…”

The sound of a chair moving across the floor broke Kent’s flow of speech and he watched as Chandler got to his feet, slowly making his way around his desk.

“What did you say?”

The words came out exactly as Kent had heard them before like venom biting into him, and he immediately bowed his head, only occasionally gazing up at Chandler as he walked towards him.

“He said, he said that Louise Iver was the devil, and that she was gonna drive you mad,” Kent said but much more silently now that he stood face to face with Chandler.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Chandler spat out angrily, and Kent kept as still as possible looking down at his feet.

“No sir,” Kent said, his voice small.

“How did you know? How did y-“ Chandler started pacing in front of him, and Kent looked up for a moment as he watched his distressed boss. This was going badly, but Kent still pressed on, even though he knew from experience that it wouldn’t bring about anything good.

“Please sir, you need to confront h-“

“I will not hear another word from you about this, is that understood?” Chandler turned his head sharply towards Kent, who immediately stopped talking and only nodded in response, the usual “yes sir” caught in his throat. He wrapped his arms around himself, once more bowing his head, immediately regretting that he had pressed the subject. This had affected Chandler far worse than Kent had ever imagined. His worries had mostly been that Chandler would have chastised him for believing in and trying to make him believe in supernatural things.    
  
Given his reaction it didn’t surprise Kent when he heard Chandler leaving his office and moments later the click of the door to the incident room, leaving Kent all alone.

But that didn’t last long as the icy cold gripped him in an instant and when he looked up, DCI Chandler was standing where his son had stood moments before.

“DC Kent,” he commanded Kent’s attention as he had before, even though Kent was obviously staring at him, this time less worried about being confronted by a ghost, since his mind was still on the utter fiasco of a conversation he’d just had with Chandler.

“You have to try harder. I will not let my son meet the same fate as I did,” DCI Chandler said.

This made Kent scoff. How could he tell him to try harder, when his words had just affected Chandler so badly?

“Try harder? He won’t listen to me. How would you have reacted if someone had talked to you about ghosts when you were alive?” Kent bit back, but the man wasn’t affected by Kent’s tone.

“Yes, I would have expected him to think logically, and the afterlife is not logical, but it is real, and he will come to know this.”

“How? Cause I can’t make him believe this. I just hurt him, essentially helping Louise Iver. By the way, if _he_ is the threat towards her, then why did she target us as well?”

“She targets many people. She spreads her evil like a web across the town. I do not know why she does everything she does, but the reason she targeted you is clear. To hurt Joseph.”

Kent brought a hand up to comb through his hair, grabbing a fistful of it.

“Then why not influence us again? We haven’t recovered yet. I’m sure it wouldn’t take much for her to get me to punch Mansell again,” Kent asked halfway laughing at his last comment, though everything was said in frustration.

“Cause it is done. The final failure that followed what he thought was a success planted the seed and now it just needs time to grow, and you have nothing but time here at the station. You on the other hand, DC Kent, only have a limited amount of time to save him,” he said nodding solemnly.

“But I don’t know how,” Kent said growing desperate with the pressure that was put upon him.

“Seek out the help of your colleagues. Maybe he will listen then. He seems to trust you all a lot,” DCI Chandler said.

“And if I manage to do that? What then?” Kent asked.

“Then you must go to her, and end this,” DCI Chandler whereupon he gave Kent her address. Kent quickly found his notepad and wrote the address down. He was about to comment on the fact that she lived in 66b, but as he wrote he felt the heat filling up the room and when he looked up again, the DCI’s form had faded.

Kent needed more guidance than that. He had to know how he could approach Chandler again without making it worse immediately, so he decided to follow DCI Chandler’s advice, as he was following his orders, and seek out the help of Buchan. DCI Chandler had mentioned a web of evil, and Kent wondered if this had something to do with the conspiracy theories of Wingfield, which were all in a box in Buchan’s basement.

He stopped outside to hear if Mansell and Riley were there, but when he couldn’t hear any conversation, he entered. The mouldy smell had finally faded from the archives, but they still smelled dusty. Kent usually wondered how Buchan could spend such a long time in these conditions, but today that wasn’t on his mind. He walked directly to Buchan’s desk, expecting to find him there, but there was no sight of him.

Kent walked over to the desk and inspected what was on it. It seemed that Buchan had used their downtime to find more of those international files that he had forgotten about again after the case they had had together with Norroy. It was so long ago but Kent still smirked when he remembered how Chandler had rejected her in the most Chandler-like way possible. Oblivious to what importance she had put into the choice, and just choosing what he thought was best for the case.

“Ah Kent! Have you gotten a new case?” Buchan’s voice rang out from behind him, and Kent turned to face him. He wasn’t sure how to begin.

“Umm no. I just wanted to… Where do you have Wingfield’s files?”

Buchan’s face dropped. “Ah those,” he replied shortly and looked towards the wall where the map was hanging.

Kent walked over and inspected the map as soon as he saw it; scanning it until he found the dot corresponding to the address that DCI Chandler had given him.

“The other files are in a box in a corner somewhere. Why do you ask?” Buchan informed him.

Kent hesitated before turning around.

“I think Wingfield was right,” he said.

“Oh no. Have you been talking with Miles?” Buchan said with a sigh. Kent realised that he’d heard Miles talk to Riley and Buchan about Louise Iver before, and wondered if he’d maybe gone to the wrong person. Miles would not have been his first choice when it came to talking about the supernatural, but the way Buchan disinterestedly had sat down at the desk and started looking through his files didn’t exactly mark him as the go-to person as he’d first thought.

“No?” Kent replied, judging that he’d probably be best off not having this conversation with Buchan.

“Look, I know it’s tempting to look for meaningful reasons for things going wrong, especially in the following inertia, but you were just very unlucky,” Buchan started explaining.

“Yeah,” Kent agreed with Buchan, trying to back out of the conversation. He was looking for an ally, not another person to convince.

Buchan picked up on Kent’s sudden change of opinion, and looked at him over the top of his reading glasses.

“Is something bothering you, Kent?” Buchan asked, just as Kent had glanced towards the door, trying to let him non-verbally know that he was thinking about leaving again.

“Umm, no. I was just curious, but you made a good point there, I’ll just, I’ll just leave again,” Kent said taking a step backwards towards the door. He hated how stupid this conversation had made him seem, and he knew his last lie was see-through, so he couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

“What you have to understand is that humans have always made up supernatural phenomena to explain the unexplained or things that their minds could not accept,” Buchan explained.

Kent couldn’t help but feel that the words were about him and not Wingfield. He didn’t exactly want to be rude against Buchan again, but before he could say another word, Kent hurried out the door.

He tried to tell himself that he’d gotten some good news. He’d remembered that Miles had been talking to Louise Iver, and judging from Buchan’s reaction, maybe they’d talked more about it at another point? He knew who to go to now, but he still felt horrible from the past conversations.

He knew what he experienced was true, but in Buchan’s world that was just explained by him going crazy. Kent’s mind circled around that, but as soon as he reached the stairs, he was stopped dead in his tracks as the cold feeling grabbed him again worse than ever. Frustrated he let out a sigh and turned to meet Chandler’s father.

“I am _trying_ , okay? But it’s not easy finding someone who will listen to me!” he almost yelled, forgetting that Buchan was just down the hall, but it wasn’t Chandler’s father who stood before him, and his heart skipped a beat upon the realization. Two identical people grinned at him.

“Oh looks like he can see us now, Jimmy!” one of them sneered. Kent shook his head and took a step backwards, stumbling as he forgot the stairs, but still keeping on his feet.

“Oh it does. It does.”

“Looking for a place to cry, boy?”

Kent couldn’t have replied if he wanted to. He was completely frozen seeing both of them there just as real as if they were still living.

 “Seems like our lesson worked. He’s learned to keep his mouth shut. Haven’t you, boy?” Kent still didn’t reply, which made the man speaking grin wide. He slowly reached out his hand towards Kent’s face, but just before it made contact, Kent reacted. He bolted up the stairs faster than he’d ever done before. He reached the incident room, and was intent on running further, but Riley was there and she called after him.

“Kent, what’s wrong?”

He turned around and glanced shortly towards her, before his eyes were drawn to the stairs. The cold was gone, but he was coiled like a spring, ready to move at the slightest hint of movement from that direction.

Riley followed his eyes, and then looked back at him.

“Kent, what is it?” she laughed nervously at his strange reactions.

Kent looked at her again. Should he lie or tell the truth? In a hopeful moment, he decided on the latter.

“I, I saw Jimmy and Johnny Kray, down in the basement,” Kent said momentarily forgetting to call them Brooks, cause when he’d seen them, they’d very much been the Krays in his eyes again, every bit as fearsome and imposing as the name suggested.

“You what?” Riley asked, and this time her laugh came out genuinely. Once more Kent feared how stupid the conversation would make him seem, but he continued.

“Their ghosts, I saw them. My aunt, she’s a psychic and I think I inherited that from her,” he explained as matter of fact as he could.

“So you see dead people?” Riley joked on. Kent’s jaw clenched as he stared at her.

“What?” Riley prompted when she saw his facial expression. “Alright then, you’re a psychic. Can you talk to my dead gran then? Tell me her birthday? How many cats she had?”

Kent turned away from her and started walking out of the incident room. He was too exhausted to deal with her jokes. “Just forget about it.”

“No, no, Kent wait,” she said, and he stopped to listen. “What was her favourite kind of jam?”

Kent didn’t even turn to look at her, he just continued towards the door, but just as he reached it, Miles came through from the other side and grabbed his arm.

“Kent! What happened earlier? I asked you to look out for the boss, and the next thing I know none of you are here, but then I find him in the bathroom!” he said. His face was hard, and all Kent could do was reply:

“Sorry, Skip.”

Miles stared at him for a moment, but then the lines on his face softened. He didn’t say a thing, as he let go of Kent’s arm. Kent imagined that he could see the sorry state he was in and went easy on him. He probably wouldn’t have been so forgiving if he knew Kent was the direct cause of Chandler’s distress, but Kent wasn’t about to tell him that. Miles gave him a pat on the back as he walked further into the incident room.

It was all he could do to keep himself together as he walked out into the crisp autumn air. He had to talk to someone who would believe him, and that someone was his aunt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, for the kudos and the comments - I really appreciate it :)


	3. Chapter 3

Kent had risked taking the bike again, despite being even less able to deal with anything ghostly than he had been in the morning. The plus side was that it didn’t take him long to arrive at his aunt’s house.

He hadn’t called her before he went to see her, just thinking that since she worked from home, she would be home, and it was only as he knocked on the door that he realised she might not be. The thought made his stomach sink. He really needed someone who would understand, and he didn’t know where else he could find someone. Even Erica would be a poor choice as she’d always been more sceptic of their aunt’s tales than he had, and even he hadn’t believed them fully.

The seconds passed agonisingly slow as Kent watched the closed door. He was just about to knock again when he, to his relief, heard movement from the other side and the door opened revealing a short woman with salt and pepper curly hair.

Kent held out his arms in greeting, but before he could do anything himself, she’d already pulled him into a hug, her arms around his shoulders, pulling him a bit downwards to meet her height.

“My dear Emer-nephew! You seem terribly down. Does no one ever hug you at that job of yours?”

Kent pulled away from her, but kept his hands on her shoulders.

“No, I’m afraid hugs aren’t really high on the list in our job.”

“They should be. Especially at your job. Don’t they know hugs have a healing effect on the mind?”

“Ha, I’ll be sure to tell them that,” Kent said sarcastically. His bitterness must have been obvious, cause he was quickly pulled into another hug. He accepted it fully and even held it a bit longer than he usually found comfortable.

His aunt led him into the house and talked over her shoulder.

“It’s lunchtime. Have you eaten yet?”

“No, I’m here for some advice. I’ll just eat when I get back to the station,” Kent said.

“Nonsense. I just made a sandwich. Come into the kitchen and I’ll make another one.”

Kent knew there was no arguing, when she had him sit down in front of the pre-made sandwich.

“I don’t really have anything to offer you. Would you like some coffee? Café latte? Tea? A soft drink? I think I have some chocolate somewhere. Or crisps? Ooh I made a cheesecake, yesterday. Would you like a piece of that?”

“No thanks,” Kent said with a smile, cause that was not his definition of “not having anything to offer”.

When she sat down opposite him, she placed a cup of tea in front of him anyway, with the explanation:

“I was making one for myself already. Now what is bothering you?”

Kent paused to choose the right words, but then he realised that he was sitting in front of his aunt and not any of his co-workers.

“I think I’ve inherited your powers.”

“You think?” She raised her eyebrows in curiosity.

“I mean, I don’t think. I have. I have inherited your powers,” Kent clarified.

Her first reaction was to smile, but then she looked at him sympathetically.

“Aw, Emmy.” She said, calling him by the nickname that only she had ever been allowed to use. “I did have a feeling about you. It’s tough at first, but I’m here for you. I’ll answer any questions you might have.”

It wasn’t as if Kent had feared that his aunt wouldn’t have believed him, but that she accepted it as fact so readily, settled some of the worry within him.

“When the ghosts come, I feel really cold, but you once said that finding a cold spot means you’re in trouble,” Kent said. He realised he hadn’t eaten anything yet, and not wanting to be rude, he followed the comment up with a big bite of the sandwich.

“Ahh yes that is something that applies to people who don’t have the gift. The cold is always a sign that the dead is present, but it’s only malicious ghosts whose auras are strong enough to be felt by others.”

Kent didn’t know if he was comforted by those words, but before he could ask about malicious ghosts, his aunt provided answers for him.

“Ghosts are very much the people they were while they were living. Most ghosts don’t go where they’re not supposed to be. I was terrified of waking up to a ghost standing in my room when I first discovered my powers. They won’t, cause who walks into a strangers house to stare at a sleeping person? Most people don’t at least, and what are the chances of the people who do not only being the ones whose souls linger, but also that they find your exact flat and room? I do have a trinket to ward off spirits around you, which you can absolutely have. I’ll just make another one. It’s not so much that it’s needed, but just like you sometimes need to turn off your phone to get some rest from people, so it is also nice to not have to deal with these kinds of people,” his aunt explained.

Kent wondered briefly if she had the ability to read minds as well, but he was aware that she knew him very well.

“Now the malicious ghosts are often bound to a specific place where their aura will begin to grow as time passes. This is why other people can feel the cold too.”

“And why are they trouble? What happens when they touch you, for example?” Kent asked urgently, thinking of the Brooks brothers.

“Well mostly cause ghosts are scary to people who have not seen them before, but especially cause it’s the malicious ghosts that people will see. Touching any old ghost will mostly feel like dipping your hands in very cold water, not too pleasant, but it doesn’t hurt. If you’re touched by a malicious ghost however, you’d be frostbitten from the sheer cold,” she’d adopted the voice of someone telling ghost stories, clearly taking the subject light. She noticed his fearful expression and calmly said: “But they’re so rare, and since they’re bound to a place, you can just avoid that place and it’ll be fine!”

Kent had to put the last quarter of the sandwich down. His small appetite had completely vanished now.

“And that trinket wards off evil spirits too?” he asked.

“Yeah, every ghost,” she smiled, but studying Kent’s face she asked: “Emmy, what’s wrong?”

Kent knew that he might as well tell her.

“I’ve already met some malicious ghosts. The people who attacked me a couple of years ago. They were murdered just outside the station and today I found out that they’re still there,” Kent said beginning to fidget with his fingers. His aunt quickly grabbed his hands across the table and squeezed them reassuringly.

“Aw, Emmy,” she said her voice dripping with sympathy. It was a little too much for Kent, who really didn’t like to be pitied, but he couldn’t really expect anything less when she’d just heard that her nephew was literally haunted by his attackers. “I’ll find it straight away,” she said and left the kitchen table. It didn’t take her long before she came back and placed a small intricately made silver trinket with a cat’s eye gem embedded in it in his hand.

“You made this?” Kent inquired, impressed.

“I did. Keep this on you whenever you’re at the station, and you’ll never have to see them again. Should you forget it however, it is also possible to will ghosts away. It’s easier to know how to do it, once you’ve done it before, but it just involves you wishing for them to not be there. If it doesn’t work, promise me you’ll run away, Emerson,” she said as she closed his hand over the trinket.

Kent huffed. “Yeah, I can do that,” he said without elaborating. He paused to think of what else he needed to ask her, while he took a sip from the now lukewarm tea.

“Have you ever heard of someone called Louise Iver?” He asked her.

She thought for a moment, but then shook her head.

“No. Who is she?”

“A horrible old lady that wants to get rid of my boss. I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but she’s some kind of supernatural entity. My boss’s father contacted me yesterday and told me that because he was the only one who could get rid of her, she wanted to take his life. He wants me to convince my boss to take up the battle, but I tried and of course he won’t believe me,” Kent sighed as he rested his face in his hand.

“It doesn’t sound familiar to me, but I know there are other supernatural things than the mere ghosts I deal with everyday, and I am sorry that such a thing has befallen you and your boss.”

Once again Kent wasn’t sure whether to be relieved at her words or not. It was comforting that she believed his crazy story in a heartbeat, even when it was beyond her knowledge, but it was scary in the way that it somehow made the threat even more real than it had been before.

“I’m just really scared for him. He won’t believe me. No one will. I had to come here in my freaking break to be able to face the rest of the day. I just, his life is at stake, and I have no way of convincing him,” Kent’s voice was starting to crack and he had to stop himself and take some deep breaths, which allowed his aunt to chip in.

“You need to find someone who will believe and support you, Emmy. Of course I’ll always be here, but having the support in your workplace will help greatly.” his aunt said.

“Believe me. I’ve tried already, but can you blame them? We deal with facts and evidence to bring our killers to justice. People were superstitious in the past and many innocent people had to take the fall for things they didn’t do because of that. Of course we aren’t supposed to believe in things like this.”

“You seem like you’ve given this a lot of thought, and everything makes sense, but you forget that you know that this _is_ a fact. I have had to have this conversation a few times in the past, and there are people who will just want to brand you as crazy, but some people will surprise you. Are you sure there aren’t anyone who would be more open minded on your team?”

“Well, the skipper did contact a medium a couple of times in the past, but he wouldn’t be my first choice of people I want to open up to, really.” Especially not when he was mad at him before he left the station, but Kent left that part out.

“Try it, dear, please,” his aunt said. This was the closest thing she would ever come to giving an order. Kent recognised the order of words from when he and Erica were kids and they didn’t want to do something. She’d much rather ask nicely, but somehow this had always worked on Kent. Not that he’d been one to disobey rules or orders throughout his life anyway.

“Besides it’s not him that I need to convince,” Kent tried to argue, but he could see from the look on her face, that she really thought it’d be a good thing. He’d hoped for some advice on how he could convince Chandler himself, but since he hadn’t really given any details about his first try and since he wasn’t going to, she’d gone the route of finding an ally. The same route as DCI Chandler had advised him to take.

In the basement, Kent had realised that Miles had mentioned Louise Iver before, and now he’d remembered that he’d contacted mediums before. Even if he was mad at Kent, he definitely seemed like the best option for an ally, and Kent had to take the chance.

He told his aunt that he would try to talk to Miles about it, and then he’d made his way out the door, but not before she’d equipped him with a Tupperware full of cheesecake, and some extra hugs to send him on his way. He thanked her for everything, and that along with the hugs made the exit take a little extra time, but Kent didn’t think it’d be too much of a problem for him to come back a little too late from the break.

There were no cold feelings beyond the actual autumn weather as he drove back to the station, and Kent couldn’t help but take out the trinket and admire it when he arrived.

Once he entered the incident room, his eyes immediately went to Chandler’s office as usual, but he wasn’t there. Kent looked towards Miles, but he was casually writing an email and didn’t seem to think it a problem that Chandler wasn’t there.

Kent walked over to Miles’ desk, but paused awkwardly nearby when he saw that Mansell and Riley were also in the room. Their attention weren’t focused on him, but he didn’t know if he wanted this conversation with them nearby. Miles didn’t give him a chance to back out, as he pushed his chair away from his desk and turned towards Kent.

“What is it, lad?”

Kent glanced towards the others and kept his voice low when he replied: “I think Louise Iver is out to get Chandler.”

Miles raised an eyebrow inquisitively in response.

“She’s the one who is responsible for all of our failures, and she’s doing it with the purpose of driving him mad,” Kent continued.

“And what leads you to believe that?” Miles said, not rejecting the idea, but instead sounding curious.

Kent drew in a deep breath preparing for whatever the response to his next words would be.

“Chandler’s late father contacted me yesterday and told me so. He said Louise Iver was the devil and that Chandler has the ability to stop her, so he urged me to tell him, but of course he wont believe me,” Kent said hoping that the last part wouldn’t reveal to Miles why Chandler had been distressed before.

“I knew there was something about that woman,” Miles said sitting up straighter, and Kent was surprised at how him claiming to have heard this from a dead person seemed to suffice as evidence for Miles. “She manipulated all of us, and sabotaged the station, and she has been right here in Whitechapel for centuries. It’s all there in Wingfield’s files.”

Kent couldn’t quite believe Miles’ reaction, but he accepted it gladly. Chandler respected and believed in Miles. He couldn’t have asked for a better person to believe in him, and that knowledge made him eagerly get straight to the point, not noticing that the door to the incident room had been opened. 

Kent told the address to Miles and explained that they would need to go there and take care of her, otherwise she might succeed in driving Chandler to meet the same fate as his father, and Miles nodded taking the information seriously.

 “Miles! Don’t humour him,” Chandler interjected loudly drawing the attention of Riley and Mansell as well. Kent jumped at the voice and turned to face Chandler.

“Kent, if this isn’t some practical joke, and you really believe in what you are saying, I’ll strongly advice you to take some time off. The stress of this job is clearly getting to you,” Chandler said, his voice firm and clear, his anger at Kent not entirely showing but lurking just beneath the surface of his cold authoritative stance.

It was the exact opposite with Kent. Chandler’s dismissiveness even when Miles was there to back him up made it hard for him to hide his emotions. He’d just had that rush of hope, but Chandler was fast shutting it down.

Miles didn’t protest, and Kent couldn’t understand why. He had believed him, and finding someone who would believe him had been presented as the solution, _but he wasn’t helping._ Kent’s desperation was growing. Chandler was sending him home and if Miles wouldn’t try to convince him, then there’d be no one to do so. She would win eventually.

Kent couldn’t battle the feeling of helplessness that came over him. His hands curled into fists and he took a step forward ready to take out his frustration at the man in front of him, ready to swipe them through the air carrying all of his negative feelings with them like they had before, but before him it was not the cheeky grin of Mansell that easily invited him to carry through with this, but the stern face of DI Chandler, and Kent stopped himself after two steps. This was already enough to have taken him way too far into Chandler’s personal space, his aggressive intent being clear to any onlooker. He masked the fact that he’d been ready to attack his boss physically by lashing out at him verbally instead.

“Will you just bloody listen to me?!” He yelled, his neck craned upwards to stare into Chandler’s eyes. He felt his throat constrict and his eyes stinging. “I’m not fucking lying to you. Why would I lie? _Why_?!” He raised his voice further. His fingers flexed in front of him. His hands close enough to touch the jacket lapels he was refraining from grabbing onto.

“Kent!” Chandler’s voice matched Kent’s in volume but was much more stable than the raw emotion Kent was expressing. “You are acting….”

“ _NO!_ ” Kent yelled turning away from Chandler, one arm outstretched, ready to strike at anything that wasn’t his DI. He sent Miles’ desk lamp flying to the ground with a crash. The noise tore through the atmosphere and let some air into the bubble that seemed to have surrounded them in their conflict, leaving them some space to breathe. The silence was only an illusion to those who were there to look upon the scene, cause within him his thoughts roared and Kent had to yell to drown out the sound.

“ _NO!_ You don’t get to diagnose me. You don’t get to try to pretend that you know me better than I do, and that I’m imagining things. This is real! It’s real, and if you won’t listen…” Kent stopped himself before saying what he was about to say, but since he’d gone this far, he carried on: “Then I’ll just have to protect you from her!”

“Detective Constable!” the voice followed him louder still as he marched out of the incident room, but Kent didn’t turn back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading, commenting and giving kudos! :) University has decided to throw everything at me the next couple of weeks, but I spent yesterday night writing the next chapter, so at least I know that that'll be ready for next week ;)


	4. Chapter 4

Chandler had watched Kent go without making a move to go after him. The silence that had followed that scene, made Chandler very aware of how the entire team’s eyes were on him. Miles looked like he was about to say something, but Chandler hurried into his office and closed the blinds before he got up to follow him. He stayed by the door for a moment ready to keep Miles out by force if need be, but Miles didn’t try to enter.

Chandler’s hands immediately found the jar of tiger balm. The act of applying it had become even more routine over these last couple of days, but the headache had been immediate when he’d entered the incident room and heard Kent talking about his father’s suicide, and likening it to him.

He wasn’t in the best place mentally, and everyone on the team knew it. Even if he didn’t feel capable of expressing his gratitude towards the team, he’d felt anchored in the past couple of weeks when they looked out for him. He often didn’t feel like he deserved their attention, when he’d isolated himself so much from them, but at the same time he needed it.

Miles could always be depended upon in a very matter of fact way. He would take away his alcohol, and insist on driving him home, when he tried to argue. He didn’t take no for an answer, and Chandler was mostly the one to give in. Then there were the “accidental” phone calls at odd hours just to see how he was doing, and the invitations round for dinner. Plus he had a talent for talking some sense into Chandler when everything became a bit too much.

But Kent. Kent was a constant in a whole other way. No matter what had happened, he stayed by Chandler’s side, always believing in him in a way that he never quite seemed to be able to do himself. Chandler had never asked for the faith that Kent had in him, yet he was always there like a beacon of hope, and his actions that day had been so unlike him that it had shook Chandler.

He had talked openly with Miles and thanked him for his support at times, but had never found himself capable of doing the same for Kent, not that he had ever taken it for granted, but how was Kent supposed to know? Chandler wondered if he’d said the things he’d said because he was fed up with never being thanked.

Chandler felt like the rock which he usually steadied himself upon was gone and he was fighting against a river current with nothing to hold on to. It was _Kent_ who had mocked him by bringing up his father’s suicide. _Kent_ who had somehow found out about the note from the Abrahamians case and made up a story around that, and it hadn’t been a single jab at him, but a continued thing. He was discussing it, his private matters, openly in the incident room and plotting to continue to taunt him. Chandler couldn’t have imagined anything more unlike him and that made the whole thing worse.

Chandler didn’t know what to do. His hands were scrubbed red and raw from earlier, the water paradoxically both being the thing that gave him temporary sanctuary from his intrusive thoughts, and the thing that reminded him of the drowning all over again. His dad was always the first thing that came to mind, but every death he’d experienced on the job were frequent thoughts and all of them had happened because of a thing he hadn’t done and maybe next time it would happen to one of his team and what if he forgot to… Oh god. He had turned on the tap again.

But he couldn’t go to the bathroom again. Miles would be over him like a hawk, but Chandler needed something to take away from the intrusive thoughts. He broke out a bottle of whisky. One he had saved for Miles in gratitude, but hadn’t found the energy to present him with yet.

As his mind grew foggy with the alcohol, the ever present thoughts of his failure, and his desperateness to prove his mind wrong, to say that all of these deaths weren’t because of him started to fade, even if he still yearned for a case to land at their desk. It seemed like forever since they’d had anything substantial and he couldn’t prove anything to anyone while being stuck at a desk.

The alcohol helped on his intrusive thought spirals, that would have him stuck at a light switch for several minutes, but his thoughts still belonged to him, and so his mind was immediately back at the hurt and betrayal he felt at what Kent had done. He’d managed to go through a vast array of emotions regarding this several times over, when Miles opened the door to his office with a worried but determined look on his face.

“Boss, we’ve tried to contact Kent several times over the afternoon, but we can’t get through to him,” Miles eyed the glass of whisky in front of him, but Chandler ignored the look.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“I am worried about him. As stupid as he was yelling at you like that and then leaving, the things he said, I believe them.”

Chandler let out a cynical laugh.

“We’ve tried to contact him in every way we could think of, but we can’t find him,” Miles continued.

“Miles, he’s a grown man, whom you haven’t been able to contact in a few hours. There is nothing to be worried about in this scenario,” Chandler snapped at him, but Miles was having none of it.

“Alright then. The most likely scenario is that Kent has gone to Louise Iver’s home. He had her address and he gave it to me. Now either he is telling the truth and is up against some powerful being and we have to help, or you are correct and Louise Iver is nothing but an old woman, but Kent will still have gone to her house, and we still can’t contact him, so either way, I think paying her a visit sounds like a good idea, don’t you think?"  

Chandler hadn’t thought he’d be convinced so easily, but the thrill of something happening had him on the edge of his seat. Somewhere in the back of his mind there was worry too, but he couldn’t quite place it. Logic told him that he was worried about the old lady or about Kent having done something to her – he was a superstitious person after all and there’d been talk about Louise Iver at the station - but there might have been a hint of worry for Kent’s safety as well, and he found himself standing up to follow Miles.

The words: “Good lad!” rang out and vaguely registered in his brain. He followed Miles down to the car, the thrill of the action that had been so appealing to Chandler ever since his first case carrying him so far, but on his way there he started to doubt the decision.

Miles had sounded so sure that he was there, and that those two options were the only ones out of every other scenario that Chandler had felt like someone was definitely in danger at that very moment, but reflecting upon it, Kent could be anywhere in the city with his phone turned off, and the result would have been the same.

He was about to protest, but Miles had predicted his change of mind before it happened.

“I knew it was too easy, but we’re in the car now. Let’s just drive there and if his moped’s not there we’ll just go back, deal?”

Chandler could do nothing but agree to that, and turned instead to look at the surroundings that grew more unpleasant by the second. Graffiti, flickering lamps, trash can fires and trash littering the streets.

“Is this where she lives?” Chandler questioned, but before Miles could answer, Chandler’s eye was drawn to the bright orange moped parked outside the building. “Miles!” He exclaimed and Miles quickly parked the car as he spotted it as well.

There was no hesitation from Chandler as Miles led the way to the correct address. Chandler didn’t know what to think, but the fact that Miles had been right, that Kent was for some reason in this building made his heart sink. He didn’t know what awaited him, but he knew it wouldn’t be good.

The door was slightly ajar, but it was impossible to see anything inside as all the lights were out.

“Hello?” Chandler called out, but when no one replied, Miles pushed the door open and found a light switch. Miles quickly scanned the first room for signs of life and continued further into the house, but Chandler was stopped dead in his tracks as soon as the light fell upon the walls.

The black goop that had haunted him at the station covered the walls, lazily slipping down onto the floor in a big puddle, and Chandler felt it again. It was something akin to his intrusive thoughts only it just left him with an unexplainable feeling of dread and the need to get away from there. She’d ruined their pipes at the station to get the goop there, but why was it here in her own home?  

“Boss!” Miles barked at him from further inside the house.

“Miles!” Chandler raised his voice in panic, the dread completely overtaking him, but what he felt was nothing compared to Miles’ frightened expression as he appeared in the doorway.

Chandler asked no questions, but quickly followed Miles back to what he’d seen. As he reached the other room, his stomach sank at the sight of a huddled figure lying in the corner of the room. His suit and dark curls identified him straight away. The feelings he’d had towards his DC in the afternoon evaporated on sight and gave way to pure concern.  

“Kent!” Chandler ran over to his side. As his face came into view, Chandler was taken aback. Kent’s eyes were shut tightly together, his face contorted into a silent scream. His body was curled impossibly in on itself. Chandler knelt down next to him, his hand hovering over Kent’s sleeve, as he observed the man long enough to notice the unsteady breaths he took. Chandler let out a sigh of relief. The worst outcome had easily planted itself as the truth in his mind when he’d seen the body lying in the corner.

“Kent!” he said again, a little louder. He tried nudging the younger man awake.

Miles was quickly at his side. “Is he…?”

“He’s alive,” Chandler confirmed before Miles found the words. He looked Kent up and down trying to figure out where the pained expression came from, but he could see no evidence that he had been hurt. He gently grabbed Kent’s arm to turn him over on his back, maybe the wound was on the other side. His body was limp as a ragdoll as he flopped over, but his expression stayed the same, so frozen but so animated at the same time. Still there was no sign of blood or bruises, but Chandler ordered Miles to call an ambulance right away. Had he been poisoned?

He withdrew his hand from Kent, feeling powerless to help and scared to make whatever this was worse.

“Oh, you arrived a little too late, didn’t you?” a female voice nearby said, and both Chandler and Miles, who was in the middle of the phone call turned around to see Louise Iver entering the room from the other side.

“What have you done to Kent?” Chandler said getting to his feet.

“Ah,” she turned her head slowly looking down at the DC. “Not much. He came here on his own, but those psychic types are a fragile bunch.” She took a step closer to Chandler, then another. Chandler was strangely on his guard giving that it was only a little old lady standing before him. He tensed at the word “psychic”. Did she just use that word to play on his insecurities as Miles had figured out that she did?

“I didn’t even have to talk to him at that book launch. His own mind did all my work for me, reinforcing the thoughts that were already there.”

“No…” it was only a whisper, but Chandler was quickly aware that the sound had come from his DC. His eyes were still shut tightly, but he’d started stirring.

“Kent?”

“See all it takes is me being near him. Hardly a crime now is it, inspector?” The moment Chandler had looked away, she was standing right in front of him. He was startled, but at the same time he was unsure of how to react. She was just an old woman standing before him after all. But his attention was quickly drawn to Kent who crossed his arms before his face as if to protect himself.

“No.” His voice was louder now. Chandler looked up at Louise who just looked at the DC with a small smile on her lips.

“Sir, please. I’m sorry. I’m sorry I yelled at you, I didn’t mean to. Please, you know I’d never do anything to purposefully upset you.” Chandler stared at Kent now.

“Kent! It’s alright. Miles and I are here to help you. There’s an ambulance coming soon. It’s gonna be alright!” he informed him.

“ _No_!” Kent screamed, his voice cutting straight through to Chandler’s heart. His arms were still trying to protect him from some unknown danger. “Sir, please. _Please_!” the last word was immediately followed by another heartwrenching scream.

Chandler knelt beside him again, trying to gently get him to let his guard down. To make him see who was there to help him, but Kent flinched violently and curled in on himself again, burying his head in his arms.

“Please, no more, sir. I promise I’ll never step out of line again. Never. You don’t have to do this. I’ve learned my…… yes sir,” the last two words were hardly more than a whisper and they contrasted greatly with the gurgling scream that followed. Chandler rose to his feet in an instant and made to grab the old woman by the collar of her coat, but she had stepped away from him again.

“Stop whatever it is you’re doing to him!” Chandler demanded. Miles had hung up the phone and stood ready to pounce on Louise Iver at any moment.

“But I’m not doing a thing. I’m not the one whose powers are sensitive to my presence, nor am I the one who invited the boy here. I am however enjoying the fact that you showed up to witness this,” she smiled looking sort of past Chandler. Then she reached into her pockets and withdrew some silver pieces and a gemstone. She tossed them on the floor near Chandler’s feet. “The stupid psychic brought this along with him too thinking it’d protect him from me as if I were a mere ghost.”

Chandler took the insult towards Kent personally even if he still didn’t know what to think of the supernatural talk. But believer or not, he was ready to try anything to help Kent.

“Miles, we need to get her away from Kent!” Chandler said. If it really was her presence that hurt Kent, this was the best course of action.

“Roger that!” Miles ran at the woman, but before Chandler could register what had happened, his sergeant was sent flying backwards into a bookcase.

“ _Miles!”_ Chandler yelled out before he’d really understood what he had just seen.

Louise Iver, as horrible as she was, still looked exactly the same, but her strength had been, for lack of a better word, supernatural.

Chandler ran to Miles’ side to see if he was okay.

Louise Iver chuckled. “Yes, check to see if the old man is okay. That was what cost you your first killer.”

Chandler tried to let the words go over his head, but he felt the sting. Miles was already moving to get up, and Chandler was already turning around when he heard that same gurgling scream from Kent.

“ _STOP!”_ he yelled, but Louise Iver was unfazed.

“Are you going to arrest me officer?” She smiled clearly not threatened by the idea.

“No,” Chandler said under his breath. “I am gonna defeat you. Send you back to where you came from!” Chandler didn’t know exactly what this meant, but what he was seeing and hearing all backed up the theories about Louise Iver, and Kent had said that this was what he needed to do.

Chandler saw a flicker of an unrecognisable emotion across her face. “So you know,” she said shortly. If he hadn’t had he keen detective's eye, he would not have noticed the small glance at the exit that was between them.

Chandler was not gonna let her get away.  He ran forwards to grab her, but she avoided him swiftly backing towards the door.

“You will not catch me. All this day will have brought you is the knowledge that you could have prevented your DC from coming here,” she said. Chandler didn’t wait for her to finish the sentence, before he charged at her again, but standing close to the wall, she splashed the black goop onto him which stopped him effectively. He tried not panic, but it was too late and he couldn’t go after Louise Iver as she turned around and- _Whack!_

Miles had punched her square in the face slamming her into the wall.

“Sir quickly! You’re okay! You’re gonna be okay. You gotta get her!”

It was enough to stop Chandler’s thoughts from spiralling and he got to Louise Iver before she recovered.

As he gripped her arms she writhed. Her voice came out as a hiss as she told him: “You know what sending me back to where I come from entails, don’t you? Once again your suspect will have died and this time you will be directly responsible.” She laughed but it came out forced and with each laugh black goop spilled out of her mouth. “And I will come back. As soon as you don’t live anymore, I will be back.”

Chandler was horrified at the thought, and he was horrified seeing the black goop pouring from her mouth. Her form started changing as he held onto her. The black goop oozing out of her pores, her smile twisting in what might have been pain, as she took a demonic shape, her voice high pitched and eerie as she spoke: “You are a failure Chandler! You are the reason people around you die! Their blood are on your hands! Your pride is what killed the last of them! You should just end yourself cause everyone around you are gonna die as long as you l…” With a swift movement Chandler had snapped her neck. Despite her words, he now knew that Kent had been telling the truth and that _she_ was the one responsible for all of those people dying.

The demonic shape collapsed and the black goop slowly bubbled to the ground.

Chandler stumbled backwards, and it was only in retrospect that he realised that Miles had been shouting at him through the demon’s words. He was shaking from the entire experience, from what he had done, but something in his mind felt lighter.

After sharing a not-entirely-happy-but-close-enough-to-that-emotion look with Miles, Chandler turned towards Kent, the goop he was covered in only taking second priority in his mind, but was discouraged to see him still unconscious, if a bit relieved to see that the painful expression had disappeared from his face.

Battling the thoughts that came from not being able to get rid of the goop, he couldn’t also battle the compulsion to check that Kent was still alive, so he did, and found that he was still breathing, and then he checked again, and he kept checking until the ambulance arrived.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It might need explaining that the black goop is how Chandler with his ability senses Louise Iver's evil. It's a by-product of her being somewhere, and in the series (which I only noticed in my latest re-watch, so clearly there is new stuff to spot every time) there is actually black goop running down her walls when we see Louise Iver in her home.   
> I'm afraid there'll be an extra week's wait for the last chapter since I don't have time to finish it next week, but thank you so much for reading!


	5. Chapter 5

Steam quickly filled Chandler’s bathroom, as he’d turned the shower on a little too hot, but it was necessary to rid himself of the goop. He’d feared he’d be stuck at the scene for much longer, but it had quickly been clear to him that the goop was only visible to him. Not that that wasn’t a cause for worry, but rather than believing himself to have gone mad, he wanted to believe Kent, and Miles had been there too, insisting that Louise Iver had disappeared before his eyes.

He sighed as he closed his eyes and stepped into the shower, letting the hot water flush his skin. As disturbing as the whole scene had been there was something else that sat uneasy with him, and he couldn’t quite place it. Sleep usually helped in a situation like that, but there was no time for sleep. Chandler had to go to the hospital and see if Kent would be alright. Miles was already there, having insisted on Chandler going home to take a shower as soon as the paramedics had arrived. Chandler knew they couldn’t just leave the place like that, but Miles had insisted he would stay and take care of it when commander Anderson had arrived. Chandler didn’t see him as often as he used to, but there’d been no ill air between them. Anderson had with a knowing glance told them that he would take care of things, and neither Miles nor Chandler had protested. They were both happy they wouldn’t have to explain this situation which wold surely have made them sound mad.

That was when Miles had gone to the hospital, and dropped Chandler off at his home. Chandler put on a new suit as fast as possible. He wanted to go and see if Kent was alright. Maybe that was the cause of his unease. Not knowing if Kent was or would be alright? Chandler didn’t know what the woman was capable of, and she had said that psychics were especially vulnerable to her presence.

Chandler had to get a cab to the hospital, since his car was still at the station. He could’ve walked there, but he wanted to be there when there’d be any news about Kent, instead of getting a phone call from Miles, even if he was happy that Miles was there to forward any news there might be.

Chandler quickly found Miles. Having visited the hospital more times, than he cared for, he was no stranger to the place. There hadn’t been any news yet, but Miles had already made sure they’d be told as soon as there was something to tell.

It didn’t exactly settle the worry in Chandler’s stomach, but he was able to sit down and relax next to Miles, who had abandoned the paper, he’d been reading before Chandler arrived, in favour of sitting there in silence with him. Chandler decided to break that silence.

“Miles. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry,” he paused for a moment as Miles raised an eyebrow at him. “For- for not believing you about Louise Iver. I was clearly wrong.” He was about to say more when Miles stopped him.

“Don’t. I wouldn’t have believed me either. An old man blethering about the supernatural. I’d be worried if you’d believed me gladly,” he smiled and Chandler couldn’t help but smile back. There was nothing more to say and the silence fell upon them again, but this time it was more comfortable to Chandler, even if the situation of waiting in a hospital wasn’t.

Chandler tried to keep his mind occupied with a book he’d brought along for the same reason, but he found it hard to concentrate on anything. In his mind’s eye the silhouette of Louise Iver’s demonic shape was haunting him, and even though he knew she was gone, the horror was hard to shake off.

When they were finally brought news of Kent’s awakening it was long past visitor’s hours, but Miles was well known there and he made sure that Chandler was allowed to visit. Chandler wanted to express how grateful he was, but Miles had sent him on his way as soon as he’d hesitated with a: “Come on, they said you could visit, but you don’t have all night.”

When Chandler entered the room and saw Kent awake, he couldn’t contain his relief.

“Kent!” he said loudly, making him jump. Chandler realised that he probably should have announced his presence before yelling at him, so he apologized.

“I’m sorry, but I’m just glad to see that you’re okay,” Chandler explained. Kent looked exhausted but besides that, he seemed okay, even if he did have the look on his face that was usually caused by Chandler yelling at him.

Chandler was confused at what he’d said that could be interpreted as him being mad at him. Maybe Kent thought he was mad about him going to Louise Iver in the first place? Chandler had been angry, but only when he’d thought that Kent had taunted him, and the moment he had seen Kent at her home, he had felt nothing but worry for him, but he didn’t know if he could tell him that.  

Kent looked like he was trying to make himself smaller under Chandler’s gaze and Chandler noted how far this reaction was from the reaction he’d had when he’d come back after the Kray attack. Back then, Kent had turned around, a big smile on his face, when Chandler had called out his name.

Then it hit Chandler that he might not be okay, and that he’d just presumed that he was, when he’d seen him awake. It had just been such a nice change from what he’d been like when he’d been unconscious, but maybe something was wrong and his mind was racing with whatever that was. How stupid he’d been to just presume.

“Is something wrong, Kent?” he asked, feeling the worry begin to stir in his stomach again. Kent didn’t reply, but ducked his head, which only caused more worry.

“Kent. Please, tell me what’s wrong,” Chandler said trying to keep his voice calm, but failing somewhat as his frustration to figure out what was wrong was growing.

Kent carefully looked up at him, but made very sure not to meet his eyes directly. He winced as he gulped, then opened his mouth slowly, and mouthed “I can’t”.

“You can’t?” Chandler furrowed his brow.  “Why not?”

Kent’s face contorted in a fearful grimace, the confusion clearly evident in his face as well.

“You don’t know? Have you lost the ability to speak? Did she do this to you?” Chandler ranted on trying to get some form of answer, and at least yes/no questions could be answered with a nod or a shake of the head, but instead of reacting Kent was just frozen with that confused look on his face, which was oddly disturbing when Chandler remembered how he’d found Kent in Louise Iver’s home.

Chandler lit up as he got an idea. “Your notepad!” he said fetching it from the pile of belongings Kent had had on him that was now lying on a bedside table next to him. At Chandler’s close proximity Kent quickly moved to the other side of the bed, and Chandler stopped in his tracks.

It was clearly him that Kent had this fearful reaction to. Chandler had suspected from his previous reactions that Kent might be worried of his anger, but his reaction then couldn’t be misinterpreted. He was downright scared of him. Even if Chandler couldn’t understand why, he put the notepad and pen back down and stepped away from his DC. Kent watched him carefully. Chandler nodded towards the notepad, still hoping for a way to communicate with Kent. Kent situated himself back on his pillow and grabbed the notebook and pen.

“Okay,” Chandler said trying to figure out what he wanted to know first. “Do you know why you can’t speak?”

Kent looked at him for an extended period of time, before slowly writing something on his notepad. He looked down as he turned it around for Chandler to read: “You don’t remember?”

Chandler had rarely been so confused. The coil of worry in his stomach tightened. “Remember what?”

Kent wrote something again, but hesitated before showing it to Chandler: “My punishment.”

Chandler gasped as he read the words. He was already regretting pressing the subject as he asked:

“Punishment? What punishment?”

Kent scribbled on the page but was still hesitant when he showed it. “My punishment for yelling at you.”

This sounded familiar. Kent had apologized for yelling at him when he’d been in Louise Iver’s home, and Chandler had been disturbed that this had been followed by Kent trying to avoid an unknown threat, but Chandler was horrified to find out that the threat in Kent’s mind had been him. The “sir” should have been indicative, but he would never have believed that a thing like that could be planted in his mind. He took a further step back from Kent. What did the man think he had done to him?

“What was the punishment?” Chandler asked weakly, not sure that he wanted to know what Kent associated with him as he stood there.

Kent responded on the paper: “You cut off my tongue, so I’d never be able to yell at you like that again.”

The room started swimming as soon as Chandler saw this. How could a scenario as horrible as that have been concocted in Kent’s mind so that he believed it. Chandler steadied himself on the wall, but was immediately reminded of the goop of Louise Iver’s walls. She was still present in this room, though she might be gone. Kent’s mind was still under her power.  Chandler felt weak and almost ill to the stomach as he remembered the screams. In Kent’s mind _he_ had been the cause of them. He desperately wanted to leave the room, but he couldn’t leave now, not when Kent needed to know that it wasn’t true.

“Kent,” Chandler said straightening himself up again, putting his hand down to the side to try and repress the thoughts. “Please open your mouth again.”

Kent jumped at the suggestion, and Chandler realized he could have prefaced it with something non-threatening, but the DC didn’t hesitate to obey his orders, and opened his mouth to reveal that his tongue was luckily still intact inside his mouth. Chandler sighed in relief, happy that the imaginings didn’t have a real life effect somehow.

“Kent, you can talk. I didn’t cut off your tongue. It’s still there!” Chandler informed him, but Kent clearly didn’t believe him as his wary gaze followed Chandler as he’d raised his voice in relief that it was all in Kent’s head.

“No Kent, remember this is what she does. Louise Iver. The provocateur. She plants an idea in your head and leaves it there to fester and grow, until you’re absolutely convinced it’s true. She’s done it to all of us before, but she told me that you were especially susceptible to this because of your psychic powers,” Chandler explained being careful to talk calmly.  

The last words seemed to waken something in Kent, his features softened a bit as some of the fear subsided in his gaze.

He eagerly scribbled down three words: “You believe me?”

“I saw what she can do, and I believe that my father has contacted me before, yes. It’s a tough thing to accept, and I’m sorry if my disbelief has hurt you, but I promise you that everything you’ve experienced that had to do with me since our argument and up until we were in this room together is not true. It hasn’t happened.”

Kent didn’t say anything, but it was clear that his mind was racing with this new information.

“Can you try to speak?” Chandler asked gently, after giving Kent some time to process this.

Kent opened his mouth again, but like the last time, Chandler had asked him to speak, he winced and couldn’t bring himself to say anything.

“Try to hum. Get your vocal folds vibrating. That doesn’t require using your tongue,” Chandler suggested. Kent was still wary of him, and Chandler felt bad that he couldn’t tell if he did as he told him cause he wanted to follow his advice or cause he was scared of what Chandler might do, if he didn’t obey. Either way he produced a humming noise, though he seemed clearly uncomfortable doing it.

“Great! Now if you open your mouth you should produce a schwa, um, it’s a vowel sound, that’s not important, well it is. Please try it,” Chandler said though the random fact felt out of place, he hoped it would lead to some evidence for Kent that he still had his tongue.

Kent once again did as he was told and produced an “uh” sound, which made Chandler’s face light up. Kent stopped as soon as Chandler continued to speak.

“There! That’s the evidence that you still have your tongue. I do believe you would have produced an entirely different sound had your tongue not been there.”

Kent blinked in surprise, clearly not convinced.

“No really. I took a course in forensic phonetics. It’s true, you just heard the evidence that you still have a tongue,” Chandler said enthusiastically.

This actually brought a smile to Kent’s face.

“What?” Chandler immediately mirrored Kent’s smile, though he didn’t know where it had come from.

“I just love you and your obscure knowledge,” Kent said half-laughing, but then the fearful expression took hold again. “I’m sorry, sir! That was out of line! I didn't mean to say- I didn't think I'd actually-”

Chandler had an urge to rush forward and hug the man as soon as he saw the happiness fade from him again, but Louise Iver’s influence was clearly still there even if he had spoken, and he didn’t want to spook him.

“No Kent, it’s alright. I’m not whoever that was in your visions. I’d never hurt you like that. I might have hurt you in other ways, and I am horribly sorry about that, but please believe that I would never do that.”

Kent closed his eyes and sighed.

“But you talked, see?” Chandler said to fill the silence. “Kent, I really am sorry that I didn’t believe you. If we’d only gone with you. I’m sorry this had to happen to you.”

“It’s not your fault, sir,” Kent said his fingers fidgeting with the top of his duvet. “I shouldn’t have tried to go after her myself.”

“But you only did that cause I was being dismissive,” Chandler said hoping the argument would end there. He didn’t want Kent to feel guilty on top of what he’d experienced.

Kent seemed like he wanted to respond, but then his attention was drawn to the other corner of his bed. Chandler took special notice of his hazel eyes that seemed to have a slight glow to them, and he instinctively followed his gaze to look at the end of Kent’s bed, but there was nothing there for him to see.

“Is someone here?” Chandler asked, and Kent turned to him. He wet his lips with his tongue and opened his mouth slightly.

“It’s your dad,” he said meekly, but he kept eye contact with Chandler for the first time since Chandler had stepped into the room, and Chandler knew he was telling the truth.

“Do you want me to tell you what he’s saying?” Kent asked carefully, and Chandler only nodded in response, looking at the same spot as Kent though he couldn’t see a thing.

“He says it’s a good thing that you finally listened to and believed in the people around you,” Kent said.

Chandler kept looking in the vicinity of where Kent was looking.

“Can he? Can he hear me?” he asked.

“Yes,” Kent replied.

“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to your first message,” Chandler said.

“He says that it was unfortunate, especially since it dealt such a huge blow to you, and that it caused him a great deal of worry that you might end up like him, but his main concerns were not your failure, but preventing her from getting to you. That was why he went to me, and had I not kept him away with my aunt’s trinket, he would have talked me out of going to see her, but he is happy with the result.”

Chandler furrowed his brow. He certainly wasn’t happy with the result. He couldn’t help but feel crushingly guilty looking at Kent who was miserable and sad and scared. He wanted to say something that would prove that he wasn’t of the same mind set as his father, but Kent continued.

“He says he can move on now that he knows that you’ll be safe from her, and he says you probably won’t believe this, but he wants to say it now that he has the chance. He’s proud of you.”

The words stunned Chandler. Had it been under most other sets of circumstances he would never have thought there was any weight behind those words, but as it was, he had to excuse himself to go and find a bathroom. He had some things to process while he cleaned up. He’d ended the thing that had killed his father, but it didn’t feel like as much of a closure as he had hoped. He believed in Kent now, but it still took a lot of faith to really accept that the words that had come out of his scared DC’s mouth were truly his father’s. As he held his hands in the scalding hot water, he tried to think of anything else than his second source of unease. Despite being such a major overhaul of Chandler’s belief system, the conversation with his father had been pleasant, but the fact that despite his efforts to console the DC, he still had an alternate image of him as a monster who would torture him was anything but.

He felt mentally drained, and though he wanted to provide Kent with some comfort, he was afraid he would end up snapping at him. Most of all, he needed to be alone right now, but a part of his mind wouldn’t even let him toy with the idea of abandoning Kent now. He took a deep breath, and composed himself before going back to Kent’s room.

Chandler entered the room, knocking lightly on the door. He tried not to let it show on his face how his heart hurt, as Kent who had been lying down, half-asleep and clearly exhausted, scrambled to get into an upright, not quite as vulnerable position.

Kent sent him a tentative smile, and Chandler repaid it. He stood at the end of the bed once more keeping a respectful distance between the two of them. Kent seemed more relaxed than he had when Chandler had last been in the room, so at least some progress had been made.

“Kent, how are you feeling?” Chandler started the conversation.

“Better now that I know that that woman is gone,” Kent admitted.

“Yeah. That’s good, isn’t it?” Chandler asked though it wasn’t really something that would carry the conversation further. He looked at the chair next to the bed, pointed at it and asked: “Would it be okay for me to sit there?”

Kent glanced over; perhaps he was judging the distance between himself and the chair.

“Yes, sir,” he answered at last, but Chandler once again got the impression that Kent’s response came from a fear of denying him.

“Or I could stay standing. Would that be better, Kent?” Chandler asked instead of immediately moving towards the chair.

Kent’s lips tightened as he gave a small nod. “I’m sorry, sir. I know what’s true and what isn’t, but it still feels so real. I don’t mean to be rude. You can take the chair if you want to, but…” He left the rest of the sentence unsaid, and Chandler sadly kept on his feet, well away from his DC. It wasn’t as if sitting next to Kent would have made any difference, but the confirmation that he was too scared to even let Chandler get that close to him hurt. Still he tried to find the right thing to say.

“Please don’t feel guilty about this, Kent. There’s no need to add that on top of this whole thing,” Chandler said a small smile on his face.

“I’m sorry to say this, but it doesn’t work that way, sir. I feel so guilty, cause I _know. It’s. Not. Real,_ ” he said and despite claiming to know what was real and what wasn’t, he sounded like he was trying to convince himself. He looked down and blinked fast a couple of times, but then his jaw tightened and he looked back up, his eyes shinier than before but his expression determined.  

Chandler wanted to say something, but he realised that there was nothing he could say that would provide Kent with a bigger sense of relief than if he just left the place, and he wasn’t blind to the signs that Kent was trying to hold back tears. His breathing hitched and he blinked rapidly, and Chandler imagined that he was probably the last person Kent wanted to cry in front of, so he wished him a speedy recovery before leaving the room.

As Chandler walked out of the room, he didn’t miss the sob that escaped Kent’s lips. He wanted to go back and comfort him, but he knew that would be selfish of him and so he continued on his way.

Even in her death, Louise Iver had managed to bring Chandler to a place of utter helplessness as he could do nothing to help the man who had done so much to help him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry for the late update. I don't have an excuse for the second week this has taken me to write other than having been distracted by other things. Thank you for your patience! :D This is the last chapter in this part of the story but there will be a second part of the story at some indefinite point in the future ;) Thank you all for reading, for the kudos and for your kind comments - you're awesome :)


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